Another Gloomy Monday for the Mets and Their Fans

The start of the workweek, for many people, is always sort of dreary. So let’s take a moment to pity those who use the Mets as a way to escape. If you are a Mets fan in 2017, nearly every week starts with added pain.

The week of April 23 began with a Sunday night home loss that completed a sweep by the Washington Nationals. Old pal Daniel Murphy hit a grand slam.

On May 1, Mets fans shuffled to their jobs still stinging from a 23-5 loss the day before in Washington. Noah Syndergaard got hurt and the backup catcher, forced to pitch, allowed three home runs.

The next week began with Matt Harvey serving a suspension for skipping a game. He ceded his rotation spot to an overmatched replacement who was bombed in a 7-0 loss to Miami.

The week of May 14 dawned with the Mets’ bullpen suffering a two-inning, seven-run thrashing in a loss at Milwaukee. A week after that, back home against the Angels, the Mets were down, 5-0, after five batters. The deficit grew from there.

The Mets did win two Sundays ago in Pittsburgh — the matchup must have thrilled a national Sunday night audience — but this past Sunday they lost to the Pirates by 10 runs. Because of a replay reversal, the Mets played “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” twice, never mind that most fans would rather have been someplace else.

The Mets are off to Texas now, seven games under .500 to match their worst mark since September 2014. Back then, Syndergaard had not yet pitched in the majors, Yoenis Cespedes had not yet played for the Mets and Jeurys Familia was not yet the closer. All are now essential to the Mets, and all are hurt.

Without those three, and with Harvey a ghost as he recovers from thoracic outlet syndrome, what could the Mets expect? They have learned to play without third baseman David Wright, and maybe they could weather Cespedes’s hamstring trouble for another week — but only if they could pitch. They can’t.

“This game’s about pitching,” Manager Terry Collins said. “We’ve had some injuries, there’s no question about it. But we came into this with a rotation we figured was pretty dominant, and we certainly did not have any indication in spring training that these guys would struggle like they have struggled with inconsistent outings. One time they’re really good, next time they’re not.”

Collins said he had learned plenty about pitchers coming off surgeries, as Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Steven Matz were this spring, and he conceded that, perhaps, he should have known to expect this. Matz and Seth Lugo will rejoin the rotation at the end of this week, but Matz has been chronically injured and Lugo has a partial tear in his ulnar collateral ligament. They are not saviors and will not fundamentally change a staff with a 4.91 earned run average.

“I’m not sure what to expect; I haven’t seen ’em,” Collins said. “I trust the minor league guys and the scouts that we’ve gotten the reports from, but when those bright lights come on, it’s a whole different game.”

Collins was asked on Sunday about the discouraging performances from fill-ins like Rafael Montero, Adam Wilk, Tommy Milone and Tyler Pill, and he paused eight seconds before responding. He said the defense could have been better for those pitchers, which was kind of him.

The truth is obvious: Organizations just don’t go 11 deep in quality starters, and the Mets’ bullpen is stocked with pitchers better suited for the minors. Without Cespedes and Wright, the offense usually cannot catch up.

“We haven’t played well enough as a group, but at the same time, our two best players are out for a significant amount of time,” second baseman Neil Walker said, most likely referring to Cespedes and Syndergaard. “That certainly doesn’t help. Not that we see things any differently in here, but it certainly changes the dynamic of things on a day-to-day basis.”

The Mets’ staff was built to pile up strikeouts, and while it still averages a strikeout per inning, that’s not much better than the league average anymore. More balls are put in play than the Mets expected, and their aging defense has not tracked those balls down. The Mets are last in the majors in defensive efficiency, meaning they are the worst at turning batted balls into outs.

Their hitters have done well in capitalizing on chances, batting .301 with runners in scoring position. Last year, the Mets hit .225 in those situations, which points to the randomness of that statistic. A regression is probably just ahead.

So is a rigorous portion of the schedule. Starting on Friday, the Mets will play 18 games in 17 days — at Atlanta, home against the Chicago Cubs and the Nationals, and on the road against the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. As usual, they will be undermanned for the challenge.

“Obviously, we’d be better with our star players, but I think we’ve got a good team,” said outfielder Michael Conforto, who has been the Mets’ best hitter. “We’ve got a team that’s capable of going out and winning games.”

If so, they have not shown it very often. And while the National League has a lot of bad teams, that should not bring comfort to the Mets. Right now, they are in that group, too.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: For Mets Fans, Most Weeks Start With a Dead-End Feeling. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe